(Newser)
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America has become a country of harassed JetBlue attendants longing to pull the emergency chute and tell everybody to go to hell, writes Peggy Noonan. Steven Slater's story has struck a chord with the public because the shift to a service economy combined with a decline in manners has left everybody interacting with each other too much ... and seriously annoying one another, Noonan writes at the Wall Street Journal.

"'I pay them to be rude to me' is kind of an anthem of the service economy," Noonan writes, recounting encounters with a "Dead Face" TSA agent, an invasive bank worker, a surly hospital receptionist. "In a service economy in the age of no manners, everyone gets on everyone's nerves," she concludes. "Everyone wishes they could take the chute. Everyone understands someone who did."